Category Archives: sleep

We all know how easy this was in our former lives. Just hop in! At any time! With no interruptions and for as long as you want! This is no longer the case. However, a shower can make a world of difference. It is actually one of the main action steps I encourage not only new moms, but also clients recovering from depression to take. Cleaning your body helps your mind. It has the capacity to wash away some of the sleep deprivation and frustration. And it has the added benefit of cleaning away stinky-ness having old milk, snot, and poo that your little one may have generously shared. For at least one moment, your body can be clean, and all your own.

Sleep

Don’t stop reading yet! I know, if one more person tells you “sleep when the baby sleeps,” you are going to punch them. So I’m not going to tell you that. However, I want to encourage you to carve out in whatever way works for you and your family, a good chunk of sleep for yourself. There is a reason why sleep deprivation is used as a form of torture. Sleep deprivation can cause difficulties in concentrating, irritability, problems with reading, speaking, and an increase in appetite. If the deprivation continues, disorientation, visual hallucinations, social withdrawal and/or challenges, memory lapses, and breaks in reality occur.[i] One of the main treatments for moms recovering from perinatal mood disorders (anxiety, depression, psychosis), along with therapy and medication, is sleep. And the sleep needs to be for prolonged period of uninterrupted time. (Disrupted sleep is as bad as no sleep – more on this
in upcoming sleep blog).

Here some ideas: hire a night doula, have your partner or grandma take over night feedings for one night, ask your partner to do the middle-of-the-night feeds, or do modified sleep training. Preserve and protect your sleep, however you can. Don’t succumb to the temptation for late night Facebook/Online shopping/Great-ideas-planning-your-new-business-vnture-as-a-mommypreneur. If these are still appealing when you are rested, you will know they are coming from a true need. Otherwise, it’s adrenaline-fueled exhaustion that would be better fed with restoring your sleep.

Sunshine

Did you know that vitamin D is one of the best antidepressant vitamins? Low vitamin D has been linked not only with postpartum depression for the mother[ii] but also increased risk of eating disorders in female offspring.[iii] Getting out of the house can be one of the best ways to bring new perspective to what can feel like drudgery of new motherhood. So pack up all your new accoutrements – diaper bag, pacifiers, bottles, snacks, diapers, etc.- and get out into the sun. It may just be to walk around the block. It may be an adventure like getting to the playground or the coffee shop. You may even coordinate this adventure with another new mom, which leads to the next tip…

Support

It is a recent cultural phenomenon that moms are trying to care for their babies alone, at home, by themselves without a “village” of support. This used to be the extended family, or way, way back in human experience, the tribe. Humans thrive on attachment. Without it, we wither. There is no wrong way to have support as a new mom, other than to not have support as a new mom. Your support could be a mom’s group. It could be your partner. It could be your therapist. It could be YOUR mom. It could be your non-mom friend. It could be your friend who is also a mom. It could be your doula, lactation consultant, or mother-in-law. It could be all of these or some combination of these. But having none of these is a recipe for trying to be Supermom (who doesn’t exist, and lives in the isolated perfectionist imaginations of moms who have no support), which can to Postpartum Depression. I love this quote from Dr. Sue Johnson, the founder of emotionally focused therapy:

“Being the “best you can be” is really only possible when you are deeply connected to another. Splendid isolation is for planets, not people.”

If you are providing attachment to your new little one, YOU need to be strongly attached.

Trying to hold, provide food, and give emotional sustenance to your baby without support yourself is like being a tree without roots. You will fall over, you will wilt, you will not thrive. An then this will happen to your baby, too… It is not only okay, but also essential that you have support! Put on your oxygen masks first, Mama.

Spiritual practice

Last but not least, having a mindfulness practice can be a helpful tool for tolerating the distress and practicing acceptance with all the learnings of new parenthood. This may be 5 minutes of meditation per day. Or it may be one bite of mindful eating during a lunch otherwise filled with Cheerios being thrown on the floor. It may be a yoga class or writing 1 page in your journal every day. You could practice deep breathing every time you hear your baby cry and your stomach tenses up with anxiety or discomfort. For new moms, it is important to Keep It Simple. Remember: the Buddha was NOT a parent when he became enlightened. Unlike him, you don’t have seven days to sit under a tree uninterrupted. You may have seven minutes. Take it. A good practice is to breath in the suffering of all new moms all around the earth and breathe out loving-kindness to all the new moms all around the earth. I used this practice when I was a new mom. It made me feel so much less alone at 3am.

In Conclusion

You are not alone, Mama. Keep going. Keep practicing any and all of these self-care practices as much as you can for as long as it takes. You are NOT allowed to use this blog to beat up on yourself for what you are not doing. If you are doing that, stop now. Thousands of other moms are struggling right along with you, trying to sleep, shower, get support, see the sunshine, and do spiritual practice! Try, to the best of your ability one moment at a time, to find the kind mother inside yourself for yourself. This kindness is where the real strength of motherhood is: it is this place that is rooted and flexible, fierce and tender. It is the one that defends her right to practice her own self-care as a way to then be able to care for others. It is the mother putting her own oxygen mask on first. In the words of Sue Monk Kidd:

“You have to find a mother inside yourself. We all do. Even if we already have a mother, we still have to find this part of ourselves inside.”

You can do it mama. If you can’t find her, keep looking. You may need to grow your capacity to be a good mom to yourself along with learning to be a good one to your baby. That is okay. She is there, waiting for you to feed, nurture, forgive, and grow her. Oh, and shower her, too!

Linda Shanti McCabe is a Mom and Licensed Clinical Psychologist in San Francisco.As always, this blog is written to provide experience, inspiration, and hope – not to provide psychological treatment. If you are struggling with a perinatal mood disorder, a good resource is Postpartum Support International.

I just bought myself a book light. Yes, I still read actual books. Every night, while lying next to my child (resorted to this- see Confessions of a Failed Sleep Trainer) I read. I have been using a flashlight that is slowly wearing its batteries down and I have to shake it to get it back on. My eyes have begun to strain. Every night, before going to sleep, I have had the thought “I should get a book light.”

Why is it so difficult for Moms to take care of themselves? It is a given that I bring my child to all of his doctor visits, dentist visits, haircuts. I make sure he gets plenty of playtime, fresh air, exercise, organic food, sleep, baths. We have special time during which he gets to decide whatever he wants to do. We play games and make up stories for all of the themes that he is encountering in growth opportunities. The cars learn how to say goodbye and then come back together, share racetrack time, use their words to say when they feel MAD or SAD. The part of me that is just-trying-to-survive-as-a-Mom, however, has no time for being playful, kind, or patient with my own feelings and needs. This part wishes they would “just go away” because I don’t have time! And yet they don’t. We all know what happens when you try to rush a young child to get through feelings quickly because we don’t have time: they get bigger! Time doesn’t exist in the emotional world. Grown-ups need to care for their feelings, too. Or they get bigger. (Or turn into depression, resentment, eating disorders, alcoholism, etc)

I am in a moms-who-are-therapists group in which we spoke about aggressive self-care recently. We shared about our “ideal, but realistic” days as moms. What would we do? The answers weren’t huge changes. They were little shifts internally and externally that made a big difference: getting up ½ hour early in order to write, enjoying cooking instead of trying to just-get-everybody-fed, going OUT to dinner to have a night off from cooking, going for a family hike on the weekend instead of spending so much time on laundry, getting a haircut or a pedicure.

Why the term “aggressive”? I like this because it expresses how much it truly is an opposite action to take care of one’s self first (or at all) for many moms. As moms, we often defend and protect our child/dren’s well-being. How often do we turn this energy toward our own care? It requires attention, intention, and yes, some level of aggression. Because the cultural messages for moms are often about martyrdom and loss of self. And so turning toward, back to the self, honoring and tending to one’s self, requires fierceness. In case you didn’t notice the quote that my new book light is illuminating:

…every day, the world will drag you by the hand, yelling, “This is important! And this is important! And this is important! You need to worry about this! And this! And this!

And each day, it’s up to you to yank your hand back, put it on your heart, and say, “No. This is what’s important.”

-Iain Thomas

PS By the way, just to name the obvious, you don’t have to be a Mom to practice aggressive self-care. It absolutely applies to eating disorder, codependency, and recovery general good self-care as well. Put on your own oxygen mask first.